Robin remembered: Rudy Garcia-Tolson, 25, a Paralympics gold medalist now living and training in Chula Vista, met Robin Williams at a Malibu triathlon when Rudy was only 8. “I asked him if he would be on my relay team in San Diego, and he said ‘yes,’” Rudy recalls.

Rudy had wondered if Robin was anything like the characters he played in movies. “I found out he was very similar in person,” says Rudy. “He was always funny, always trying to make a bad situation better.”

Their relay team, Team Braveheart, competed in the Challenged Athletes Foundation triathlon in San Diego for 11 years beginning in 1998.